Our Adventure to the Arctic Circle

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Today we got up early, had breakfast, made a picnic lunch and took off by 6:40 am to go to the Arctic Circle.  It is going to be about 200 miles each way, and the road is a mixture of dirt, gravel and stretches of broken pavement.

 It was early enough in the morning that there was fog over a small pond not far from the road.  Looks pretty cool.

 This is the Alaska Pipeline.  I did not realize that any of it went underground.  Here is a view of the pipeline going underground.

 The Dalton Highway is a rough, industrial road that begins 84 miles north of Fairbanks (Elliott Highway) and ends 414 miles later in Deadhorse, the industrial camp at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean.

 56 miles in on the Dalton Highway, we cross the Yukon River. Above is looking east and below is looking west.

 The bridge that crosses the Yukon River has a wooden road. You can also see the pipeline on the other side of the river.


 The Yukon River Camp is a main stopping spot.  It has a restaurant, gift shop, propane, fuel and lodging. The little building you see is the restaurant and gift shop.  Below is the fuel station.  They have both diesel and gasoline.  We needed to fill the Jeep tank. The price for regular gas was $5.499 per gallon. We needed a little over 14 gallons...$81+. OUCH!!!

 Onward heading north on the Dalton "Highway". Another gravel road called a highway.  

Our next point of interest was Finger Mountain. Looks a lot like a pointing finger doesn't it?

 I just put one of several interesting rock formations that were also at this viewing point.

This is looking out at more rock formations and the beautiful valley we will be heading toward.

 Here's another view of the valley that also shows the road and the pipeline.

WOW we made it to the Arctic Circle.  Now we are able to check this off our bucket list. Yee Haw!

Above shows one of the areas where the pipeline is zigzagged.  We were told the zigzag allows for expansion of the pipe.

Above shows how the pipeline is mounted above the ground. Below is a closeup of one section.

On the way back we saw a lot of the fireweeds along side the road. Then...

we saw this whole hillside covered in those bright pink fireweed. 

We stopped at the BLM Visitor Contact Station and got our certificate that we crossed the Arctic Circle.

The drive was slow because of the condition of the road.  It took us 11 hours round trip.  What an accomplishment today!
We are very blessed!